I don’t doubt that all unaltered footage has been preserved digitally, even if it hasn’t been reassembled. I bet every single frame of film shot for all of the movies has been scanned and filed in the Lucasfilm archive.
Hope springs eternal. Didn’t they hack up the OOT negatives to create the SEs?
I don’t quite get how high definition is an alteration but okay. What, do they think the original films were shot on vhs or something? That’s a common misconception that bugs the crap out of me with ignorant people, that hi def is a new thing. Sure it’s new for HOME MEDIA but films have always been made at a high resolution, or whatever the analog term for that would be.
I have never seen this misconception except in the case of Star Wars. It’s baffling that it keeps being repeated.
Yeah, it’s really strange.
I don’t quite get how high definition is an alteration but okay. What, do they think the original films were shot on vhs or something? That’s a common misconception that bugs the crap out of me with ignorant people, that hi def is a new thing. Sure it’s new for HOME MEDIA but films have always been made at a high resolution, or whatever the analog term for that would be.
I have never seen this misconception except in the case of Star Wars. It’s baffling that it keeps being repeated.
There is a belief that “old” movies aren’t HD or won’t look good in HD. It’s not just Star Wars. Not sure where it comes from. The people citing it specifically about the OT are just grasping for straws at this point.
Show them a restoration of an older film and you can quell that pretty quickly. Look at The Wizard of Oz or Gone With the Wind on Blu-ray. They look stunning.
I think it’s because people hear high definition technology marketed as a new thing and see TV shows shot on tape as the old thing. I’m not sure if people really know how high-quality 35mm film can be.
Given that film will probably be dead by the end of next year, I doubt it.
Tv shows are still being shot on tape, only now in HD. Some 70’s sitcoms shot on tape look really bad now for some reason, especially Norman Lear productions. Maybe the video masters on those need restoration?
Would it even be possible to restore something shot on videotape?
On the flip side the first two seasons of Saturday Night Live look great for their age. I’ve only seen one video glitch so far, and I’m not sure it would even have been visible on a CRT. You can tell NBC didn’t allocate their best cameras to the show early on though. It’s a shame they didn’t remaster the film inserts because the telecine they had at the time was pretty awful. (I could get better results shooting a projector aimed at a blank wall.) Whether that footage still exists is anyone’s guess.
It’s a shame a lot of Universal’s 60’s/70’s tv output shot on 35mm hasn’t been remastered. Some of what I see airing on Cozi TV are from really old broadcast video masters.
Weren’t most 60s shows finished on film because broadcasting was still done via telecine, thus making remastering them more practical?
The next time you hear someone say film isn’t hd, remind them that The Shield - a show shot in 16mm - is being remastered in 4k.
I have a Blu-ray of the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre from a 4K scan that’s quite breathtaking.
Tv shows are still being shot on tape, only now in HD. Some 70’s sitcoms shot on tape look really bad now for some reason, especially Norman Lear productions. Maybe the video masters on those need restoration?
On the flip side the first two seasons of Saturday Night Live look great for their age. I’ve only seen one video glitch so far, and I’m not sure it would even have been visible on a CRT. You can tell NBC didn’t allocate their best cameras to the show early on though. It’s a shame they didn’t remaster the film inserts because the telecine they had at the time was pretty awful. (I could get better results shooting a projector aimed at a blank wall.) Whether that footage still exists is anyone’s guess.
It’s a shame a lot of Universal’s 60’s/70’s tv output shot on 35mm hasn’t been remastered. Some of what I see airing on Cozi TV are from really old broadcast video masters.
I’d like to see KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER remastered for a Blu-ray release.
Look at it this way: it’s more likely than Babylon 5 or the theatrical cut of THX 1138!
Realistically, what’s keeping Disney from releasing the OOT? Costs? Low interest? But I’d argue that, since we know they’re already scanning every negative, even deleted scenes (see Rogue One), they may as well have scanned all of the original trilogy at this point, anyway. And even if they don’t find printing new discs worth the costs, they could release it as a digital download: granted, it’s not the same, but it’s a viable solution that would cost them virtually nothing.
So, I don’t think these are the problems. I think they just don’t want to release it at this point, probably because they want to focus on marketing the new movies.Well, let’s remember that even if they do acquire Fox, there’s the level of interest they do or don’t have in restoring the OOT, not to mention what kind of profit it’d turn given the limited interest level from a small portion of the fanbase. And that’s also not forgetting that there are a dozen dozen mistakes they could make in the restoration. I hate being Debbie Downer, but as an OOT fan, I’ve gotten burned way too many times. The excitement of reading that originals would come out only to find out that they would just be the GOUT still stings after all these years.
I think a lot of the 35mm preservations here tend to over-correct the grain thing, though. I don’t necessarily want a blu-ray to recreate the experience of watching a print in a theater; I think home video ought to be mastered for, y’know, the home, and on home systems excessive grain tends to look like noise. The more recent of the Goodfellas transfers strikes a good balance, I think. It’s got enough grain to be able to tell instantly that it was sourced from film without hitting you over the head with it.
I’m a little torn about this. I’m inclined to believe that once you’ve released a film, you should have the definitive cut right there, but what’s that? Especially back in the day, there are so many variables, especially with 35mm projection. But if I’m being honest, I’d probably say that I’d like the home video version of a film to recreate the original theatrical experience as closely as possible.
Depends if you’re talking camera negative, interpositive, internegative, or release prints. Each one is a step down generationally and each one will have less detail to be captured than the last.
So in theory, camera negative is the way to go, as it has the most detail. But then you have no color timing information - you’ll have to go the interpositive or internegative from which the release prints were struck for that, and boom, you’ve lost two-three generations of detail. Or you could scan the o-neg and match the color grading to a reference print (interpositive or release print), but that still opens the door to revisionist color timing.
This is fascinating stuff. Where’d you learn all this, just over the years?
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1D62GU
Here’s a curveball. What does this spell for Fox’s holdover on a potential OT restoration?
Didn’t that fall through?
[John Doom said:]
“Realistically, what’s keeping Disney from releasing the OOT? Costs? Low interest? But I’d argue that, since we know they’re already scanning every negative, even deleted scenes (see Rogue One), they may as well have scanned all of the original trilogy at this point, anyway. And even if they don’t find printing new discs worth the costs, they could release it as a digital download: granted, it’s not the same, but it’s a viable solution that would cost them virtually nothing.
So, I don’t think these are the problems. I think they just don’t want to release it at this point, probably because they want to focus on marketing the new movies”.good thinking dude I agree in all of that but if fox deal works out then the unaltered cut could be on the way very fucking quickly
God willing.
No it didn’t fall through they are still talking